Swamped

"What do you mean by a bad reputation?"

"Oh, just that the theater critics don't care for them. No idea if that's a fair assessment or not, since I don't watch." He pauses before continuing - seemingly focused on a pile of tickets. "Of course, there's always rumors with traveling performers, that they're just in town to steal things. Mind, that's usually just the first week or so. If they don't leave town and nothing big actually goes missing, the sort who gossip about that tend to move onto something else."

"Is that what happened this time?" you ask. You have a strange hunch.

And he does seem a bit concerned about answering.

"Well. There have been some thefts this month, so the rumors are flying a little harder. Of course, most of those were resolved - the thieves were found, the items returned - but that doesn't stop the rumormongering." He's making a show of looking down at the tickets rather than at you.

"Most?" you ask. "Have you been following the thefts, then?"

"Ah, you could say that. My cousin's in the town guard. Says they've been taking the thefts seriously so as not to disrupt the festival." He starts putting a few of the ticket piles together in one spot before pulling more off. "It just seems to be the usual, greedy people, often out-of-towners, grabbing something that looks valuable and trying to skip town. Never very sophisticated jobs, so they haven't been hard to track down. Well, there's still the..."

He suddenly stops.

"Never mind, it's nothing important. I expect the boss will be back with your liquor soon, you should get back to the bar."

Hmm. Maybe his cousin told him something and he's not supposed to share it. Maybe the city doesn't want the people to know it's gone missing.

But he does have a point, you shouldn't linger here long. Still, if you think you can wrangle any more information out of him about the mystery theft, this is probably your best chance.